Category Archives: Macroeconomic policy

“State of the Union: A Muddled Message”

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. If nothing else, it’s clear (as one wag wrote this morning) that the state of Obama’s rhetoric is strong. The President almost always gives a good speech, but it’s the follow-through that is generally problematic. And the speech itself sends […]

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“A Plea to the President: Tear Up That Speech”

By Stephanie Kelton, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Missouri-Kansas City My colleague and fellow blogger, Randy Wray, has just argued that President Obama should scrap the speech he’s planning to deliver tonight and surprise the American people with something entirely different. I couldn’t agree more. And while I agree that job creation must be […]

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Obama’s new triangulation strategy

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns As I indicated in my post Grading Obama’s economic policy after one year, I see the President as a triangulating center-left politician of the Bill Clinton variety. The reason we have seen public policy which has been favorable to big business and reactive to events on the ground during this […]

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Steve Keen: The Economic Case Against Bernanke

By Steve Keen, Associate Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney and author of Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences The US Senate should not reappoint Ben Bernanke. As Obama’s reaction to the loss of Ted Kennedy’s old seat showed, real change in policy only occurs after political […]

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Could England Be the Next Iceland?

Before you dismiss the headline as nutty, at least one respected macroeconomist and former central banker, and now chief economist of Citigroup is of the view that England is at risk of a currency crisis. He noted last November: With the pound sterling dropping like a stone against most other currencies and credit default swap […]

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“Why Bernanke’s Defense of Super Low Interest Rates Does Not Hold Up”

By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. A week ago, in Atlanta, Bernanke responded to his critics, including John Taylor of Taylor Rule fame (the Taylor […]

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“Spain and the EU: Defict Terrorism in Action”

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. Speaking of President Obama, Karl Rove writes, “After a year of living in his fiscal fantasy world, Americans realize they have a record deficit-setting, budget-busting spender on their hands.” Well, given his history with former President Bush, it certainly takes […]

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Roubini v. Gross on Outlook for 2010

I saw this item on RGE Monitor (Nouriel Roubini’s blog/economic analysis website) and was gobsmacked: Greetings from RGE! A couple months ago, in a widely read FT op-ed, Nouriel Roubini warned that the “mother of all carry trades,” one funded in U.S. dollar denominated debt, could pump up asset bubbles around the world… When uncovered […]

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“Robert Rubin’s absurd economic recommendations”

I should not be surprised to see that Robert Rubin, having been one of the single most destructive forces over the last two decades (Greenspan gets more heat because he was more visible, but Rubin has long had enormous sway) continues to have influence, not simply through his large network of well placed proteges (Larry […]

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“WWKD – What Would Keynes Do”

By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives Keynes: The Return of the Master By Robert Skidelsky (2009) John Maynard Keynes is having an excellent crisis. Dead for over a half a century, the British economist is enjoying a comeback as […]

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“2010: Foreseeable and Unforeseeable Risks ~ The Room For Policy Error is Enormous”

By John Bougearel, author of Riding the Storm Out and Director of Financial and Equity Research for Structural Logic Policymakers managed to extinguish a financial panic in 2008-09 by March 2009. This rescue operation allowed the broad U.S. stock market as measured by the SP500 to rally nearly 70%. Extinguishing the panic was to be […]

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How not to solve a financial crisis

By Edward Harrison As we head into the New Year, I am trying to look back at the last one with some semblance of a coherent interpretation of events that leads to a strategic vision of the future.  I have already touched on stimulus, kleptocracy and crony capitalism as dominant themes for the year 2009.  […]

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A look back at the debate on the role of monetary and fiscal stimulus in depression

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. As Yves is in light posting mode, I wanted to run these thoughts by you here at Naked Capitalism regarding stimulus and the role of government in a debt-deflationary environment. As we approach the new year, I have decided to write a few thematic posts as a look back […]

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Guest Post: Economists Are Trained to Ignore the Real World

By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. As I have repeatedly noted, mainstream economists and financial advisors have been using faulty and unrealistic models for years. See this, this, this, this, this and this. And I have pointed out numerous times that economists and advisors have a financial incentive to use faulty models. For example, I […]

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How to escape currency volatility and contagion in the globalized world of finance

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. This is a modified version of an article I posted yesterday at the Big Picture based on two recent articles I wrote on currency news in the Baltics and the Middle East. The question I ask is this: now that finance is global and capital can move in and […]

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